An Evening of Pernicious Peril
by Sanru
Summary: Or The Calamitous, Catastrophic Case of Ill Mannered Prepubescent Miscreants. "Leo, I want to give the Battleshell a full overhaul, three pots of coffee, to sleep uninterrupted for twelve hours, and an IQ test because I'm thinking like both Mikey and Raph which is frankly quite terrifying."


Disclaimer: Hoping that one of these days I will be able to say they are mine… this is not that day…

Author Notes: This was inspired by of the coffee pot breaking at work (which is a horrible form of torture when your day starts in the office at five), having to be there for almost 14 hours and then coming home and seeing 'Donatello's Badd Day' from the old 80's series. It didn't help that I stayed up for the additional four hours pass my normal bedtime to type up most of this story in one shot.

A quick thanks to my friend Darcy for help with the title. Kudos go out to her.

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An Evening of Pernicious Peril

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Donatello muffled a yawn as he headed for the abandon warehouse that they used for a garage. It was late even by his standards and he was surprised he had only gotten two calls from a worried older brother who had just wanted to check on him. It was endearing and at the same time annoying. He was capable of taking care of himself and everyone in the lair knew he was going to be visiting the Professor in the junkyard. It wasn't his fault if they lost track of time discussing the relative heat death of the universe.

Still there was a faint shading of pink on the horizon which was the herald for the coming day. Training would be starting in less than an hour and Master Splinter was going to have his shell when he found out that Donatello had pulled another all nighter for the second time this week. He had tried to explain to his Sensei in the past that he didn't need a lot of sleep, that for him four to five hours a night was all he needed. That usually ended with him being forced to drink a herbal drug slipped into his tea only to wake groggy and disoriented eight hours later with his shell covered in the artistic attempts of his younger brother trying to live up to his namesake.

And failing miserably.

Still the evening had been salvageable despite its horrible start. He didn't know how Leo kept doing it, or even why he insisted on making tea in his room, but setting off the fire alarm not once but twice even though Donatello had told -and sub sequentially- threatened him to get rid of that annoying hot pot he kept in his bedroom had gone right in one ear and out the other. Then his blue masked brother had put the icing on the cake by demanding to know why Donatello had disconnected the power to his room. For some reason, when Donatello had replied that it was for his peace of mind, Leo hadn't been very happy about it.

Donatello was trying to explain to his older brother in a relatively steady voice why he had done it when Raphael had entered in his usual explosive fashion. This fashion included wearing the tattered remains of a leather jacket, his shellcycle's helmet scraped and dented under one arm, and the cycle's left handle bar gripped tightly in the opposite hand. "Yo Donnie!" he had said lifting the handle bar up as if it was a trophy he had just won. "I think the bike needs an upgrade."

This resulted in a mad scramble to make sure Raphael was alright, which he was. There wasn't even a scratch on him. For whatever reason he had decided to wear a leather jacket Don was grateful he had. It gave him the time to roll over onto his shell when he had fallen off the bike and prevented him from getting any road rash. With Raph's health assured, the dour glare of their older brother was turned from Donatello to Raphael. The lair was soon filled with the common and almost welcoming sound of the two oldest brothers arguing over the differences between reckless endangerment and testing out the limits of their equipment.

Don had just removed himself from the middle of the verbal tennis court when there was a small explosion from the kitchen followed closely by a squawk of surprise. Mikey peeked out from around the wall separating the lair from the kitchen looking totally innocent except for the oddly greenish purple goo that was dripping down the side of his face. "Don?" he had said, fluttering his eyes in an attempt to look innocence but only managing to look downright weird in Don's opinion. "I think there is something wrong with the coffee pot."

That had been the proverbially straw that had broken the purple masked ninja's back. He had left after calmly informing his three siblings that their various messes had better be cleaned up by the time he came back or he would personally see to it that every electronic deceive in their household would never work again. None of his brother's argued with him and he took the Battleshell without a single question as to why. Had he been asked, he would have simply stated that he did not want his brothers breaking his pride and joy with their incompetence that seemed to be growing exponentially with every passing day.

This was how Don knew he had stayed up too late. He was very grouchy and a little vindictive. He hadn't turned the power back on to Leo's room before he had left. He stifled another yawn, barely closing his eyes for what seemed like a moment, only to reopen them and find a young girl maybe a maximum of fifteen feet from his bummer.

His heart plummeted out of his chest, through his entire digestive tract and even managed to phase through all the solid matter separating it from the center of the earth. Donatello jerked the wheel hard to the side as he slammed on the breaks. He felt the one ton behemoth that he was driving, tilt dangerously up on two wheels before finally slamming back down as its forward momentum was finally ground to a halt.

Donatello looked in the side mirror, fearing the worst, only to have the worst come true in all its horrible glory. The young woman was laying limp on the pavement. It didn't even look like she was breathing.

He was out of the Battleshell and running towards the body, cursing his own lack of attentiveness and the overall stupidity of driving around so late/early as tired as he was. He fell to his knees beside her, careful not to jostle her body in case of a spinal injury, and picked up a limp wrist. A sigh of relief escaped him when he felt the strong yet slightly accelerated pulse. She was alive. He didn't like the idea of pulling a hit and run but he could hardly allow the authori-

He blinked his eyes open, groaning as the bright light of the morning assaulted his dazed mind. What the shell had just happened? He tried to spit the cotton out of his mouth as he attmpeted to remember what on earth had happened and why was the sun so fragging bright this early in the morning. The cotton was stubborn and refused to be spat out so he tried to bring a hand up to pull it out of his mouth only to realize that he couldn't move them. He couldn't even pull his feet apart. Realization dawned on him and Donatello groaned again, debating if he should just knock himself out by repeatedly hitting his head of the floor of the Battleshell.

He had fallen for the oldest trick in the book and now he and the Battleshell were being kidnapped/stolen.

This day just kept getting worse.

Trying not to alert anyone in the forward part of the large van that he was awake and rather pissed off at both them and himself for being suckered so well, Donatello slowly rolled his head over to rest on his other cheek and examined his kidnappers. There were four of them, maybe in the early to mid-twenties, and all were sporting purple dragon tattoos prominently on their biceps –in the three males' cases- and across their stomach –in the only girl's case. The girl looked almost exactly like the one he had 'hit' the night before, suspiciously so, and again Donatello wanted to bean his head rather hard off the floor and just knock himself out.

Michelangelo was right, he'd do anything for a pretty face, even turn over his van and himself to the Purple Dragon's gang.

Life was hating him so hard right now and he could feel the beginnings of a caffeine headache coming on.

Still, thoughts of self-mutilation and self-criticism aside, Donatello had been trained to not give up. No matter how many times Mikey made the comment of him being a damsel in distress, he was still a ninja. A ninja that was currently pissed off, suffering from a baseball bat induced headache with a growing caffeine headache right on his heels, and the desire to berate the man driving his van to push the clutch all the way in before shifting. The grinding gears in the transmission were like his van wailing for help as it was abused by a kid who had obviously never drove a manual in his rather short life, which was subsequently getting shorter every time he shifted gears.

The kids seemed to be celebrating kind of early in his opinion. They still had a ninja in the back of the van, yet they continued to boast and guess what Dragonface was going to give them for such a catch. Since some of their tattoos were still red around the edges, Don knew that the early celebration was driven more from inexperience than anything else. He would have this wrapped up and heading home in no time.

That is, he would if he could feel his hands.

Whether it was just dumb luck on their part or on purpose Don didn't know but his hands were most assuredly asleep. They were so numb he couldn't even tell if they were moving when he tried to wiggle his fingers. He thumped his head lightly off the floor, finally giving in slightly to his desire, as he realized that he was going to have to call for help.

How embarrassing…

Donatello knew that he was never going to live this down. Leo would try to lecture him only to have to pause and center himself every few words do he didn't break down into hysterics. Mikey and Raph would be breaking down into hysterics and neither would ever let him forget about this. Even Master Splinter would feel free to throw his two cents in, asking him what he had learned from this entire experience.

He heaved a sigh and set about inching himself across the floor to the one of the rear computer stations. He might as well get the mortification over with sooner rather than later. Especially since sooner included him being turn over to Dragonface and the transmission's inevitable death.

He managed to finagle his way up into the chair that would have made any caterpillar proud. This was in no way any thanks to the kid's poor driving skills as he found the button to engage the van's nitrous feed and, luckily, the emergency parachute in the span of about forty five seconds when Donatello was almost to the top of the imposing mountain of chair. Don sat himself up right in the chair, silently promising the Battleshell to give her a complete overhaul and repair any and all damages he found post haste as soon as he got her home.

It was then that Donatello realized that he had one crucial flaw in his plan to call for help. He had been planning on using his toes to input the proper commands to get him a live video feed to all the shellcells he had created but had forgotten how he had originally design the rear seating at the consoles. The chairs were automatically locked down while the vehicle was moving, to prevent any injuries. The only way to move a chair while the vehicle was in motion was to press down and hold a button built into the keyboard. It had made perfect sense back then but now it was probably the stupidest idea he could have come up with. He couldn't reach the button with his toes because the chair was too close to the console to begin with and turned the wrong way. He glared darkly at the four rowdy twenty year olds, attempting to manifest heat vision and get rid of them once and for all.

The familiar sounds of a motorcycle drew his attention away from attempting to mentally bend light wave lengths and he peered out the small side window only to see none other than Casey Jones riding alongside the Battleshell looking utterly confused. Donatello nearly jumped for joy, remembering only at the last minute how painful that would be with his feet bound and unable to help him land properly, and silently willed Casey to call his brothers. He had tinted the rear windows so that no one could see in them which meant he couldn't signal him. By now he had definitely missed both morning practice and his family's minor meltdown when they realized that he hadn't come home the night before and wasn't answering his shellcell which was missing from his belt.

Casey stared at the van for a while longer much to Donatello's growing ire. He had even backed off a bit to see the van's license plate as if he actually had to confirm that this was the real van despite the fact that it had a very customized paint job for a reason. His anger suddenly deflated as he realized he wasn't sure what the Battleshell's license plate was. Had he even put one on this thing?

Casey was finally calling someone on his shellcell. Donatello had never been really good at lip syncing but even he knew that when Casey tore the phone away from his ear that he was talking to a rather upset older brother that had a very violent temper. Raphael could be so predictable sometimes.

Casey nodded his head in acquiescence to whatever was said to him and then slowly increased speed and left his line of sight. The rear of the Battleshell may have had tinted windows but the front of it did not. As soon as Casey saw who was driving the Battleshell his brothers' would be able to piece together the entire humiliating story. He thumped his head lightly on the console, this situation couldn't get any worse.

"Oh shit! That's Casey Jones!"

…or he could be wrong…

With Casey now able to see into the Battelshell, the uneducated bunch holding him and torturing his van would realize they were spotted and it was easy to guess the following events. A chase would have to ensue most likely because Raph would be threatening Casey with every fiber of his being not to lose sight of the van. This would mean reckless driver from the wannabe Evel Knievel driving the van which would attract the attention of the police. In a fit of either fear of getting caught or actually wondering what all the shiny buttons were on the dashboard, one would accidentally be pressed and there would be rockets everywhere. Why did he build a rocket launcher into the van?

Oh yes, Mikey.

He didn't need to go any further down that path of thought.

Of course the merry chase through most of downtown Manhattan had probably been caught on every known news station in the city which meant Bishop was going to use this as more fuel for his rid-the-world-of-mutant-turtles campaign. It also meant that Donatello was getting a wide and varied variety of bruises as he was thrown around the back of the van from all the hair pin turns and slamming of breaks. He made a mental note to have the seat belts automatically lock someone into place the moment they sat down in them so –heaven forbid- if this ever happened again he wouldn't be made intimately and forcefully acquainted with just about every surface in the back of the Battleshell. Again.

The kids were lucky, and he was lucky, that somehow they managed to elude the police and all the news helicopters that they had managed to collect in their mad romp about the city. Donatello attributed that to the astounding amounts of dumb luck that this group of kids seemed to have. One of the kids somehow found the smokescreen and instant oil slick buttons at the same time the driver took a sharp turn in an attempt to throw off their pursuers. The resulting smoke cloud pile up was impressive and the driver doing several donuts for whatever reason in the middle of that madhouse only added to the confusion of everyone in the immediate area. Oh and the screaming that everyone in the van was participating in. That helped with the general confusion of everything too.

Though Don was never going to admit to screaming his head off as he tried to brace himself as best he could for a crash that never happened.

By the time his kidnappers pulled the Battleshell into a Purple Dragon warehouse hang out late that afternoon, Donatello was worn out and wanted nothing more than to have a cup of coffee and go to bed for the next year. He felt like he had lost several years off his life and he was not in the mood to continue this wild and wacky ride that should be in some form of comedy routine and not in his daily routine. Too bad the back of the doors were thrown open and he found himself dragged out and forced to kneel in front of Dragonface.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" Dragonface smirked down at Don. "A turtle in over his head?"

Don resisted the urge to roll his eyes. That was so cliché.

"You kids did good for a bunch of high school drops outs."

Now that was just adding fuel to the fire of his ever growing embarrassment. Outwitted by young dragons who had never even graduated. That stung his pride worse than anything else that had happened in the past twenty four hours.

"Now what am I going to do with you?"

Rhetorical question, Donatello wanted him to just get on with it.

"Jones saw you right? Good. Call the gang in, it's time we stomped those turtles flat and what better way to lure them in here than with some live bait."

That got a roar of approval from his followers and finally an eye roll from Don, who couldn't stand how similar this plan was to every other one he heard out of a bad guy's mouth. 'We got one of them? Use them as bait! Quick tie him over a pit with sharks with a candle slowly burning through the rope to make his friends hurry up and save him! No even better! Tie the rope to the door knob so when they open it to dash into his rescue, he falls right before their eyes so that they can realize that they made it all possible!'

Total and utter bullshit.

He was thrown into a small, bleak office with nothing but a desk and a ceiling fan that idly whirled about happily ignoring the prone turtle below it. To add insult to injury, there was a coffee maker on the corner of the desk. The smell of brewed coffee filled the room and yet there was none to be had for the annoyed, pissy, and slightly enraged turtle. There was going to be some serious shell to pay as soon as he got loose.

Time passed slowly, he was sure that one full revolution of the ceiling fan was a minute and began counting those minutes in shear boredom. There was no telling how long it was going to take his brothers –and Casey if he wasn't in jail- to find him. It would be too much to ask that his brothers would actually use the program on the computer designed to locate the Battleshell in case it was ever stolen. The one he had told them all about and they had promptly ignored him.

Of course, if they tried that, it meant his computer was going to be destroyed by the time he got back to the lair. Mikey would constantly get distracted by the game ads that would appear on the web browser and infect his computer with every kind of Trojan out there. Leo could just open a word document and have half a dozen viruses just pop into existence in the background without anyone ever knowing where they came from. Raph would hit the buttons to hard and break his keyboard and mouse and then punch the monitor when everything stopped working correctly. It wasn't even the monitor fault, it was just the messenger!

Donatello giggled to himself, feeling oddly light headed and tired but unable to sleep. He had been awake long enough that it was beginning to affect his ability to think straight. Without caffeine to help him stay energized, Don knew he was rapidly slipping into a Michelangelo like mindset where everything was a joke and needed to be laughed at. He giggled again. It couldn't be that bad, sanity was overrated anyways.

He went back to counting the rotations/minutes as any concept of time began to slip away from him, humming a tune that he couldn't quite place. He wanted to sleep but he knew better than to nod off. He needed to stay awake in case an opportunity presented itself for him to do something. He wasn't a hundred percent sure what that something could possibly be but he would be ready for it. He was a ninja after all.

Which –just for the record- was by far the **coolest** thing ever!

Donatello groaned and forced himself to count to ten in English, Japanese, Spanish, French and Portuguese. He could feel his IQ draining out his ears. He needed to somehow get a grip and stop thinking like Mikey. While he loved his little brother dearly, trying to think and act like him would probably get him killed.

The faint smell of coffee in the office did nothing to help him focus.

A faint but familiar war cry reached his ears and Donatello huffed to himself. Finally, someone had either pieced together his location or Raphael had just kept punching Dragons until one squealed. Either way, his brothers were here. The general ruckus of sounds that they made when fighting were starting to echo through the door. It would only be a matter of time.

"Get the hostage!"

The yell was muffled but had Donatello seething. Mikey was so going to ridicule him for not only getting caught but needing recuse twice fold. This went beyond embarrassing, he wasn't sure if it was worth surviving this anymore and took a moment to pray to whatever deity that may have been listening to just put an end to his dignity right then and there to get it over with.

That was when a perfectly suicidal plan began to develop in his mind. Michelangelo was going to ridicule him the most about this entire situation so maybe it was time to act like his little brother. It would be so unexpected that he should easily be able to catch the Purple Dragons off guard with it.

No one ever suspected the quiet one after all.

It was difficult to move with his hands tied behind his shell and his feet bound together but he twisted himself around, readying to spring his improvised trap that would probably get him killed if he wasn't careful. Still he watched with an almost manic grin under the gag as the knob turned and the door was then flung open. "Boyakasha!" he bellowed and sprung forward, slamming all two hundred plus pounds of himself right into the unfortunate Dragons that had been standing on the other side of the door. Well, he tried to yell that but because of the gag it came out more like, "Duyaconsaur!"

The two Purple Dragons who had just opened the door had the most stun expressions on their faces as the supposed defenseless hostage came exploding through the doorway and straight into them. Donatello paused mid congratulations to himself when he did indeed realize that there was one flaw with his plan that could easily get him killed. The design of this particular warehouse had the offices stacked at the one end, creating two floors that looked out over the expansive floor of crates and workers that would be going about their average workday.

And of course he had to be put in the second floor.

A squeak escaped the gag as Donatello's unwieldy charge sent both him and the two dragons in his path through the flimsy handrail –that he was certain was not up to the OSHA safety regulations to begin with- and out into open air. Don quickly turned over in midair as gravity and physics worked in tandem against him. This was one of those times were he hated physics with a burning passion. The great thing about having a shell was that it could take the coming impact with the ground much better than his face. There was a go chance that both his hands and wrists were going to be broken from the landing but he couldn't feel them anyway at the moment and he had a stockpile of morphine back at the lair. He'd be fine. The fact the he was going to cushion his fall with one of the dragons who just happened to have been the one abusing his truck's transmission just added something unexplainably better to the coming hit.

And what a hit it was.

At least he supposed it looked a lot more impressive than it felt. However, if Raphael's yelling his name was any indicator, his free style form left a lot to be desired. His shell and the kid cushioned his impact better that he had expected and the fact that they only had about ten feet of free fall before tumbling into a stack of crates helped as well.

By the time they had rolled to the bottom of the crate stack, Donatello was positive that his bruises had bruises which had their own bruises and maybe one or two broken bones. He lay on his stomach where he had finally rolled to a stop and calked this entire experience up to Leo's miswired hot pot. That thing was so toast when he got back home.

He couldn't see the fight from where he was laying but he could hear it. It didn't sound like it was abating any. Don huffed to himself. He was going to have to inform his brothers that this was the worst rescue attempt ever. He was tired of waiting. He was going to rescue himself at this rate.

Inching his way across the floor –which was a lot harder than he had thought it was going to be- he made it to the wall and with an ingenious combination of bracing his shell against the wall and hopping, he managed to get himself upright. He glanced down at his feet and tried several little hops to test his balance before he began hopping with determination along the wall. Now he just had to find something sharp…

Something sharp just happened to be a fire axe, sealed behind a little glass panel built into the wall with oh so helpful instructions on what to do in case of a fire. What wasn't helpful was there were no instructions on how to remove the fire axe if you were bound hand and foot and needed to cut yourself free. The irony escaped him as he gave the inanimate object a glare that would have made Raphael proud. Actually…He had already though and acted like his younger brother, why not try acting like one of his older brothers too?

With that logical thought Donatello reared his head back and head butted the glass case.

It worked and so did the long list of swear words he had accumulated over the years as he shook his head as if that could drive away the pain. The glass had yielded to his head's forward progress but the glass had counter struck by slicing up part of his face and forehead. It hurt. A lot. Grumbling behind the gag Donatello glanced at his now freed prized. He stuck his nose underneath the handle and lifted the axe from the bracket. Its own weight took the axe to the floor as physics once again began to work in his favor like it was supposed to.

He pounced on his newly acquired prize with zeal. Now he could finally get these ropes off and hopefully be able to get his hands works properly again. There would be some series shell to pay if he couldn't use his hands. The Purple Dragons were going to be broke when he came to collect all the loans on property damage, assault, torture and general loss of sanity.

He kind of missed being sane…

It took some maneuvering that made him feel like he was trying to play twister bound hand and foot before he managed to pin the axe and saw at the ropes binding his hands. Since he couldn't feel his hands, he fully expected to cut his wrists open on the sharp axe blade. When the rope finally broke and he managed to finally pull the two clubs that had formerly been his arms around, he was surprised to see that the only thing cut was the rope. Things were finally starting to look up for a change.

That was when something chose that moment to explode, rocking the floor beneath him and bringing the fight to a sudden halt. Donatello sat there, blinking in surprise at the suddenness of that explosion and the eerie calmness that had seemed to take over the room at large. It didn't sound like there was anything or anyone moving. The sound of glass shattering reached his ears and he amended that last statement. It sounded like there was barely anything or anyone moving.

"Oh my gawd!" came the fake high pitched girl voice with a heavy southern accent that his younger brother sometimes took on when he was trying to really instigate a fight. "Would you look at the size of that gun he has?! I think he's compensating for something!"

That statement was punctuated by another loud explosion which only added to the headache he had going. It had started as a simple caffeine/baseball bat headache but now it had almost grown into a full-fledged migraine. Don sighed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose with his arm, wishing that he had the fine motor control to pinch it instead. That always helped to lessen the headache at least a little bit.

Speaking of that, he glared at the two appendages sitting in his lap. They were beginning to burn as the flow of blood returned to them. As long as there was no nerve damage he should be able to move them shortly. Of course, that was also assuming that the muscle tissues hadn't died from lack of oxygenated blood but he was going to stick with an optimistic thought process until otherwise proven wrong. It always seemed to work for Mikey so maybe it would work for him too. They were –even though ninety percent of the time he denied it- related.

He stared down at his hands, willing his fingers to move. As effective as they would be to beat someone with, he kind of liked being able to flex his hands. Have prehensile thumbs was amazingly effective in numerous situations and he enjoyed being able to use them when he needed to. He couldn't imagine how hard it would be to explain to one of his brothers how to rewire something. It was hard enough explaining to them how to make a sandwich.

"Move your fingers," he said out loud as if it would speed up his recovery. Pin pricks of pain were beginning to appear over his hands and wrists as the blood returned to them. There! A small flicker of movement from his middle finger! Now, for the other five…

Another explosion rocked the warehouse, too close to his position for his comfort, and he slowly crawled to his feet. Judging by the faint whine he had heard, the weapon in use was some form of rocket launcher and it was being fired relatively close to his position. He should probably go and do something about that but not without some kind of weapon. He looked at the axe sitting on the floor and shrugged. Why not? It worked well enough to cut him free, it could be used to disarm people.

Well, not like that, that would just make a mess and he'd probably get stuck on clean up duty.

Again.

With axe in hand and hands feeling like they should again (at least mostly), Don creped around the crates he was hiding behind. It was fortunate that he didn't just walk them because Dragonface happened to be standing next to an open crate full of rockets that was in the pile he happened to be hiding behind. As he watched, the leader of the Purple Dragons dropped another rocket down the launcher and lifted it up onto his shoulder taking aim at where he assumed his brothers were.

"Goongala!"

And Casey. It was nice to know he wasn't in jail. Kinda…

Still, he had matter to discuss Raphael style with Dragonface. He should have been worried about his brothers and friend but he wasn't . He had a much more legitimate reason to give the leader of the gang a beat down. It was Dragonface had locked him in a room with an empty coffee pot and hadn't even offered to make him a cup.

That was just rude.

Hefting the axe onto his shoulder, Donatello slipped silently up behind him, staying low to make it harder to see him and waited patiently for Dragonface to fire the next rocket. Even though he knew that cutting through the launcher's barrel was a sure fire way to destroy the launcher, he did enjoy living (when it didn't include a caffeine headache). Cutting the barrel would detonate the currently loaded rocket and that explosion would set off the crate next to them and that would be a big boom!

Big badda boom…

Dragonface rocketed backwards as the rocket left the launcher and sailed out into the room. Don was happy to see that his brothers and Casey managed to get out of the line of fire and the resulting explosion was rather impressive. It blew out a hole in the wall large enough to drive a semi through. He paused for a moment to stare in awe and it took Dragonface moving to remind him of why he was there.

"Boyakasha!"

Without the gag in his mouth, it actually sounds like it was supposed to. Dragonface jumped a mile at his sudden shout. Donatello quickly jumped to the side as he turned to look behind him and brought the axe swinging down. It worked splendidly. The axe cleaved the launcher in half with relative ease. There was even enough leftover relativity in that motion to allow him to continue through with a follow through and maximize the potential of the acceleration due to gravity as he slammed the shaft of the axe into Dragonface's leading knee.

That little blurb sounded almost like his normal, coffee filled and clear mindedness but he didn't have much time to dwell on that. Dragonface was howling in his ear as he clutched at his broken knee cap, trying to do a combination hop and shuffle away from Donatello. Despite now possibly being deaf in one ear, he knew that the two of them were far from done.

He snatched at the gray vest that was by far one of the best handles he had found that night and pulled the leader of the gang back to face him. Donatello knew that he was not the best fighter out of his brothers but thanks to all those hours acting as a mechanic and lifting everything from car pieces to a newly repair refrigerator by himself, he had plenty of muscle that he willingly used now. With his tormenter facing him, he brought them nose to nose.

"Dragonface," he growled, secretly surprised at how much his voice sounded like a very pissed off Raphael's. "I've only got one thing to say to you," The man only whimpered in response. He pressed their forehead together and glared into the terrified brown eyes looking back at him.

"_If I am ever your prisoner again, you __**will **__give me a cup of coffee!_"

Dragonface gaped at him for a moment, making a wonderful impression of a large mouth bass, before whispering in disbelief, "What?"

Donatello somehow managed to warp reality briefly and managed to get even more into his face, "I… want… COFFEE!" He punctuated that yell by flinging Dragonface like a rag doll out into the room proper which brought the fighting to a screeching halt.

Grabbing the first thing on hand -which happened to be a metal folding chair- Don brandished the chair as if it were a sword. Another final straw had been placed on the camel's back and there was no way in shell he was taking anymore prisoners. "WHO'S NEXT!?" he yelled pointing the sword at several Dragons that happened to be standing nearby. "Well?!" No one seemed to be taking him up on his offer so it appeared that he needed to entice someone to fight him because he needed the stress relief it would provide.

"FINE!" he said and reached into to the crate of rockets. As long as he didn't hit the ignition point then the rocket should stay inactive. At least it shouldn't….

"FORE!" He tossed the rocket up in the air and with a resounding bong, hit the rocket as if it were a baseball and sent it end over end towards the far wall.

Dragons and Leo scrambled away from the rocket that bounced several times on the ground before coming to a stop against the warehouse's wall. Everyone stared at it for a split second -except for Don who was calmly reaching for the next rocket- before there was another cry of 'fore' and another bong as a second rocket went sailing across the room. It was only after Don was reaching for his third rocket did the first one finally detonated, leaving a rather impressive hole in the wall that several Dragons took as a new exit and bolted.

It was as he was reaching for his four rocket that Don noticed that Dragonface was starting to crawl away. "Nope," Don put the rocket back and grabbed him by the back of his shirt. "Not yet." That was punctuated by another explosion. "You're not going anywhere till you've made me a cup of coffee."

Donatello giggled as Dragonface actually whimpered only for him to say, "But… I don't have any coffee…"

That was very unfunny and Donnie stopped giggling immediately. "What?" he asked in a deceptively quite voice.

"I…" Dragonface turned away from Donatello as if that would somehow deflate his words more. "There is no coffee in the warehouse."

If the camel's back hadn't been broken before it was definitely snapped in two now. It was like the world had fallen out from under his feet and he was plummeting into the sun. No coffee… no… coffee… NO COFFEE!

He now knew what Raphael felt like when he lost his temper.

To tell the truth, Donatello really wasn't sure what happened next. His vision really did go red and the next thing he knew he was swinging the chair for all he was worth, slamming it repeatedly into Dragonface who was doing his best to curl into a smaller and smaller ball. When had he thrown him onto the ground? When had they moved away from the crate of rockets? And why the shell was Leonardo yelling at him now? He had to finish beating Dragonface within an inch of his life. He wanted coffee, dammit!

"Don! Don! Stop," Leonardo said to him as a hand pulled back on his shoulder. "He's had enough."

Donatello to his oldest brother, tossing the chair to the side without preamble as if he hadn't been in the middle of pummeling someone with it. He did notice that the chair had several large dents in it but it had helded together like the trouper it was. "Leo," Don said in a tone of voice that was a warning as much as it was a demand. "I want to give the Battleshell a full overhaul, three pots of coffee, to sleep uninterrupted for twelve hours, and an IQ test because I'm thinking like both Mikey and Raph which is frankly quite terrifying."

"Sure, Don," Leo said in that tone of voice that promised anything the other wanted even as he looked over him rather concerned. "Do you want them in that order or what? Are you okay?"

Don thought about it for a moment before shaking his head. "No. I want a nap." His knees buckled then but Leo easily caught him and moment later Donatello was sound asleep for a much needed and a well-deserved rest.

-Break-

The coffee pot sputtered as it spat out the last of the blackened elixir that he craved so much. It probably wasn't the best idea to drink several pots of coffee back to back like this but he had been promised three pots and he was just starting the third. Besides the warm coffee seemed to be just what he needed as he puttered about the workshop, working on repairing the Battleshell after the manhandling it had received the other day.

Donatello was still finding it hard to believe that he had slept for fourteen hours only to stay awake long enough to eat something before falling asleep on the couch again. He had gotten his wish to sleep and it was nice to be able to sleep without being disturbed by his brothers. That had probably been the best night's sleep he had had in several years. He knew he was an insomniac and didn't need to sleep a lot but it had still been a nice change.

Cradling his steaming mug close to his chest, Don carried the mug into his lab and turned his attention to the Battleshell's radio that was currently in pieces strewn about his workbench. Somehow the 'kids' had managed to break both the volume and the tuner so that the radio only blared what could only be a cat being rubbed across the strings on electric guitar much to its displeasure. And that was before a human with a scratchy voice started screaming into the microphone. How could that be called music?

Still it was nice to be home. He settled down onto the stool before the workbench and set the mug nearby but out of the way. He reached for his tools so he could get back to work. It was just another quiet day here in the lair… He just felt like he was forgetting something…

The fire alarm suddenly went off.

He looked up in surprise before quickly pushing his stool out and hurried over to his computer to confirm with the thermal imaging setup he had throughout the lair on what had caught fire. The skin around his one eye twitched when he realized what had happened. Instead of getting mad, however, a smile broke out across his face as he grabbed his bo staff and headed out of his lab with a happy bounce in his step.

He knew he had forgotten something.

_CRUNCH!_

"Donatello! What the shell?! That was my hot pot! I use that!"

"Not anymore you don't."

_~Fin~_


End file.
